What to Expect at AWS re:Invent 2017

The annual Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent conference is just around the corner (the show kicks off November 27 in Las Vegas). Rest assured, there will be lots of AWS-related products, partners, and customer news. Not to mention, more than a few parties. Here’s what to expect at AWS re:Invent 2017—and a few more topics we hope to hear about.

1.) Focus on IOT, Machine Learning, and Big Data

IOT, Machine Learning, and Big Data are top of mind with much of the industry—insert your own Mugatu “so hot right now” meme here – and we expect all three to be front and center at this year’s re:Invent conference. These Amazon Web Services are ripe for adoption, as most IT shops lack the capabilities to deploy these types of services on their own. We expect to see advancements in AWS IOT usability and features. We’ve already seen some early enhancements to AWS Greengrass, most notably support for additional programming languages, and would expect additional progress to be displayed at re:Invent. Other products that we expect to see advancement made are with AWS Athena and AWS Glue.

In the Machine Learning space, we were certainly excited about the recent partnership between Amazon Web Services and Microsoft around Gluon, and expect a number of follow-up announcements geared toward making it easier to adopt ML into one’s applications. As for Big Data, we imagine Amazon Web Service to continue sniping at open source tools that can be used to develop compelling services. We also would be eager to see more use of AWS Lambda for in-flight ETL work, and perhaps a long-running Lambda option for batch jobs.

2.) Enterprise Security

To say that data security has been a hot topic these past several months, would be a gross understatement. From ransomware to the Experian breach to the unsecured storage of private keys, data security has certainly been in the news. In our September Enterprise Security Survey, 73% of respondents who are IT professionals don’t fully understand the public cloud shared responsibility model.

Last month, we announced our collaboration with Palo Alto Networks to help enterprises realize the business and technical benefits of securely moving to the public cloud. The 2nd Watch Enterprise Cloud Security Service blends 2nd Watch’s Amazon Web Services expertise and architectural guidance with Palo Alto Networks’ industry-leading VM series of security products. To learn more about security and compliance, join our re:Invent breakout session—Continuous Compliance on AWS at Scale— by registering for ID number SID313 from the AWS re:Invent Session Catalogue. The combination delivers a proven enterprise cloud security offering that is designed to protect customer organizations from cyberattacks, in hybrid or cloud architectures. 2nd Watch is recognized as the first public cloud-native managed security provider to join the Palo Alto Networks, NextWave Channel Partner Program. We are truly excited about this new service and collaboration, and hope you will visit our booth (#1104) or Palo Alto Networks (#2409) to learn more.

As for Amazon Web Services, we fully expect to see a raft of announcements. Consistent with our expectations around ML and Big Data, we expect to hear about enhanced ML-based anomaly detection, logging and log analytics, and the like. We also expect to see advancements to AWS Shield and AWS Organizations, which were both announced at last year’s show. Similarly, we wouldn’t be surprised by announced functionality to their web app firewall, AWS WAF. A few things we know customers would like are easier, less labor-intensive management and even greater integration into SecDevOps workflows. Additionally, customers are looking for better integration with third-party and in-house security technologies – especially application scanning and SIEM solutions – for a more cohesive security monitoring, analysis, and compliance workflow.

The dynamic nature of the cloud creates specific challenges for security. Better security and visibility for ephemeral resources such as containers, and especially for AWS Lambda, are a particular challenge, and we would be extremely surprised not to see some announcements in this area.

Lastly, General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) will be kicking in soon, and it is critical that companies get on top of this. We expect Amazon Web Service to make several announcements about improved, secure storage and access, especially with respect to data sovereignty. More broadly, we expect that Amazon Web Service will announce improved tools and services around compliance and governance, particularly with respect to mapping deployed or planned infrastructure against the control matrices of various regulatory schemes.

3.) Parties!

We don’t need to tell you that AWS’ re:Play Party is always an amazing, veritable visual, and auditory playground. Last year, we played classic Street Fighter II while listening to Martin Garrix bring the house down (Coin might have gotten ROFLSTOMPED playing Ken, but it was worth it!). Amazon Web Services always pulls out all the stops, and we expect this year to be the best yet.

2nd Watch will be hosting its annual party for customers at the Rockhouse at the Palazzo. There will be great food, an open bar, an awesome DJ, and of course, a mechanical bull. If you’re not yet on the guest list, request your invitation TODAY! We’d love to connect with you, and it’s a party you will not want to miss.

Bonus: A wish list of things 2nd Watch would like to see released at AWS re:Invent 2017

Blockchain – Considering the growing popularity of blockchain technologies, we wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon Web Service launched a Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) offering, or at least signaled their intent to do so, especially since Azure already has a BaaS offering.

Multi-region Database Option – This is something that would be wildly popular but is incredibly hard to accomplish. Having an active-active database strategy across regions is critical for production workloads that operate nationwide and require high uptime. Azure already offers it with their Cosmos DB (think of it as a synchronized, multi-region DynamoDB), and we doubt Amazon Web Service will let that challenge stand much longer. It is highly likely that Amazon Web Service has this pattern operating internally, and customer demand is how Amazon Web Service services are born.

Nifi – The industry interest in Nifi data-flow orchestration, often analogized to the way parcel services move and track packages, has been accelerating for many reasons, including its applicability to IoT and for its powerful capabilities around provenance. We would love to see AWS DataPipeline re-released as Nifi, but with all the usual Amazon Web Services provider integrations built in.

If even half our expectations for this year’s re:Invent are met, you can easily see why the 2nd Watch team is truly excited about what Amazon Web Services has in store for everyone. We are just as excited about what we have to offer to our customers, and so we hope to see you there!

Schedule a meeting with one of our AWS Professional Certified Architects, DevOps or Engineers and don’t forget to come visit us in booth #1104 in the Expo Hall! See you at re:Invent 2017!